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Hacking stratfor to robin-hood the information on private citizens that they obtained illegally for corporations isn't protest? Ruining HBGary federal, which sought to defame activists on behalf of Bank of America isn't protest? You are so fucking dumb that you think you're convincing anyone. Better have one of yoir sockpuppets downvote me, too, you pussy.

While I understand I am replying to a point of sarcasm, nethertheless we really should invest some time in using words correctly. Terrorists user terror to achieve a goal. Period. Activists use activism to achieve a goal. Vigilanteism may or may not use terror, but it is using directed force (of one form or another) to achieve a goal (in this case, hacking deleterious services in the name of 'justice' as understood by those engaging in it.) Whether justified or not or misdirected or not, it's not terrorism unless the force being applied is terror, and that does not accurately describe anonymous. Tangentially, I wish we'd do the same with words like LIBERAL (to behave permissively) vs. AUTHORITARIAN (to behave restrictively) or CONSERVATIVE (to resist change) vs. PROGRESSIVE (to seek change.) In all cases, the context is what's most important. Are you permissive toward personal in-home nondangerous lifestyles? Well, then you're socially liberal and probably democratic (party) leaning. Are you permissive towards gigantocorporations buying legislation and dumping toxins into water supplies on the cheap? Then you're corporately (neo) liberal. Hell, you have to be both liberal (towards individuals) and authoritarian (toward those arguing to take personal liberties away) to achieve and end... so I guess using D(D)oS against D(D)oSers almost makes sense.
MEH! I just wish people would be simple and clear about the labels we through around and understand them in contexts.

If government agents lobbed military-grade ordinance at innocent civilians in the UK, we'd call that unlawful killing and lock the bastards up. And by the same token, if GCHQ had DoS'd targets belonging to legitimate wartime enemies, we wouldn't be criticizing them.

As a rough rule of thumb, the government isn't allowed to do things to citizens above and beyond what any civilian could do without a court mandate or a valid piece of legislation. Unless GCHQ have such a thing, they did wrong.

One of the identifying characteristics of a police-state: If the police commits some act of murder, torture, destruction or terrorism, nothing happens. If a citizen does, the hammer is brought down hard.

I understand your point to some extent, but governments have the power to imprison people they deem to be a hazard. A private citizen cannot imprison another citizen. The government does have special privileges. I do agree these researchers broke the law though, just like a sheriff who arrests someone unreasonably. The question is how bad an infraction it was.

Actually, private citizens are permitted to own tanks in the USA. Lots of paperwork, security checks, and some sort of license is required. All "guns" must be inoperable.

You can have tanks in the UK too.

Ross Noble has a tank – or more accurately an Abbott 433 self-propelled gun – which he brought from a website called Tanks A Lot. 'What's amazing is that you don't have to pay the Congestion Charge,' he told Richard Herring on his Leicester Square Theatre podcast released this week. 'There are no rules about it,' he added. 'The guns are deactivated now, but if they worked, from where I live now, I could hit Gatwick. That's not a threat. That REALLY isn't a threat. But I tell you what, the badger cull in our village is going well. I got the fucking lot...'

There's no paperwork or 'security check' outside title work, and whatever else goes on down at the DMV which would preclude an individual from owning tanks that might be light enough for operation on the road. They just have to have headlights and signals like any other vehicle. I suppose if it's heavy enough you might need a commercial / heavy vehicle driver's license. If you want to operate it on private property, you certianly wouldn't need any of that.

That's because in the US people are citizens, in the UK they are subjects.

Also it is legal to own and drive tanks both in the United States and the UK, and there is a community of hobbyists in England who purchase old Soviet armored equipment and restore it to drive to meets just as though they were participating in an antique car club. The machine guns/cannon have to be disabled though unless you live in the US and have the proper permits.

That's because in the US people are citizens, in the UK they are subjects.

You're a little behind the times, US people are subjects now, too.. Our 238 year old Constitution has been run thru the shredder by the last several administrations and many of us are sick and tired of it...

The military can only use those weapons against other militarys and with direct authorization from the government. GCHQ feels it can use cyberattacks against citizens who had no, at the time, been convicted of or even charged with any sort of crime, with no oversight or authorization.

At most the Anonymous DDOS attacks were a criminal matter for the police, not national security or warfare.

What matters is the target and the type of damage/injury done. Without an emergency, the military is certainly not allowed to drive tanks through citizen's houses, fire missiles at civilian airplanes or shoot people with the weapons they carry. And after that emergency, there better be a damn careful investigation.

However, in a police-state that investigation gets more and more meaningless and eventually anybody on the side of the government can declare any emergency they want,

To the police that is? That government agents (no not only the 007 kind) tend to overstep their authorities and commit crimes from time to time isn't that uncommon or even strange (even a government consists of people after all) but the solution to that is to report the event to police and let the legal system handle it. And hope the guilty are punished, sadly that isn't certain...

And this time, there will not be anybody from the outside to remove the government. That means the USSR-Model, where after decades of totalitarianism, one mole with a vision makes it into the government, or the North Korea model, where that does not happen for a long, long, long time.

http://pigs-at-gchq.com/ [pigs-at-gchq.com]
Do laws matter?
When all agree to abide by a law it is called a social contract in English. “An agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for mutual social benefits, by safeguarding individual freedom for state protection.” The Oxford dictionary puts it this way: “Agreement among the members of a society or between a society and its rulers about the rights and duties of each.”
The U.K. and the U.S. authorities have broken this agreement so badly in so many different ways that the future is not looking very good. Until they agree to keep within this social contract I will simply tell them at every opportunity to fuck off. Hope you do the same.

I believe you'll find Anonymous is breaking the social contract because governments have already done so.

You've completely missed the part where the GP said:

"Agreement among the members of a society or between a society and its rulers about the rights and duties of each." The U.K. and the U.S. authorities have broken this agreement so badly in so many different ways that the future is not looking very good.

I find it difficult to disagree with the notion that the governments have already broken the social contract, and Anonymous is a reaction to that.

I don't necessarily agree with everything Anonymous does -- but I sure as hell understand the reason for them existing. When your rulers are unjust, you have little recourse except to break the social contract as well.

That those same unjust governments decide that gives them free reign to continue to be unjust is just more of the same.

I believe you'll find Anonymous is breaking the social contract because governments have already done so.

Perhaps you could explain then how attacking random people and corporations is a useful reaction? Anonymous aren't out to "enforce" the social contract but for "lulz" or to satisfy their pique. They are cyber vandals, little more. Anonymous is no more justified in most of what they do than most any other vigilante group.

I don't necessarily agree with everything Anonymous does -- but I sure as hell understand the reason for them existing. When your rulers are unjust, you have little recourse except to break the social contract as well.

Then you basically negate the social contract entirely since there will always be someone or some group that can claim that they have been treated unfairly, and we now move to the realm of vigilantes. I don't see them fighting for noble causes in the case of genuine oppression so much as petty grievances and fringe causes. They vandalize over the irk of the hour despite their noble claims.

You will notice that they are heavily active in Western democracies which have many rights guarantees, social safety nets, and little or no meaningful political oppression. Perhaps you can tell us, what country would they not vandalize? Where can we find an order so universally just and beyond reproach from every viewpoint, including the insane, juvenile, or foreign, that it cannot be assailed?

They neither support nor enforce the social contract, they undermine it.

...and we all know the vastly less powerful are equally morally culpable. That's why bombing illiterate goat herding religious nuts is also universally accepted as the epitome of Great Justice. Just replace "angry citizen" in this analogy... how could anyone fail to see?

So if a system evolves from kind of democratic and respecting human rights into police state and we lose all the control possibility we should just agree with this and silently protest? Maybe we should. Gandhi did that after he found out military response to British rule is pointless. OC problem here is that oppressors are difficult to send away as they live among us. Another thing is - government agencies doing things that other cannot, operate under specific rules that are there to ensure no violations oc

Indeed. The main characteristic of a police state is that the duties of government and its agents go away and the rights of the citizens do the same. There is no mutual benefit left in the end. A police state corrupts "the law" and it becomes completely unsuitable to judge right and wrong. (Not that it is very useful for that in the best of circumstances...)

"Yes, you are an exception to the rule if you work for the government."

You have accepted your role as a cog. An unthinking unit of work and obedience to be monitored and vihttp://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/02/05/1318223/britains-gchq-attacked-anonymous-supporters-with-ddos#ewed with suspicion. But what is most worrying is that you did it without so much as a whimper.

There is not 'exception to the rule' under UK law. You have to have some 'ok' from the gov to do this. The GCHQ staff understood that when they first collected all calls (domestic too) via their Intelsat efforts in the 1960's.
The Intelligence Services Act of 1994 offers a lot of new legal protections, then the Intelligence and Security Committee, SIGMod (sigint modernisation) followed in mid 2000 with more legal backing. Open court use of material is still under GCHQ veto, most is "passed" to other groups, MI5, ~ Special Branch.
The use of a "packet flood" back up would have been a new step beyond passive logging and longer term infiltrating efforts.

A SYN attack exploits a vulnerability in the TCP/IP connection establishment mechanism. To mount a SYN flood attack, an attacker uses a program to send a flood of TCP SYN requests to fill the pending connection queue on the server. This prevents other users from establishing net

Time for a new Magna Carta. Next time, restrict both the king and the government action against the people by recognizing the universal truth of freedom.

The problem is in thinking there are no such things as rights, only permissions. No freedom of speech, only permission? This is ignorance of the highest degree. In the absence of all laws there is total freedom: Any action can yield any reaction. Laws restrict the fundamental freedom granted to intelligent forms by the nature of the universe itself thr

Wasn't just the Anonymous group the attacked ones, but other people that wanted to stay anonymous too, like political dissidents and others. Is not the War on Anonymous [nbcnews.com], but the war on anonymous, privacy and anonymity is becoming outlawed (except for them, of course)

Granted those Anon members might have gotten what they deserved -- but government/police/military etc is never, ever (ever) the appropriate agent for 'vengeance'. Because at the end of the day, it's really quite arbitrary who is offended by what, thus a slippery slope is created.

Example.. one day the police use excessive force against a terrorist or pedophile, and that's applauded -- who's to say they won't then go and use such methods on suspects ranging from... jaywalkers on up?

To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

I suspect most North Koreans would gladly trade the problem of a DDOS attack against them by the government for engaging in DDOS in exchange for their current problems of political prisoners being experimented on [theguardian.com] and mass starvation due to the government diverting both local food and foreign food aid to the military.

Go look at the link I provided. Do you really think that I somehow persuaded the Leftist journalists at Guardian paper to write bad things about North Korea - 10 years ago? If you do then you are a nitwit, at best.

I can only persuade people open to actual evidence, and some people aren't. You apparently are in that category. What does that say about you? Thoughtless and doctrinaire come to mind, I'm sure more things apply as well. None of them are positive attributes. You should really rethink your li

So your preference for the Anonymous members is that instead of suffering a transient DDOS attack having no long term affect on them that they would instead be prosecuted, their PCs confiscated, they be imprisoned and fined for engaging in illegal DDOS attacks - since that is a very possible outcome of the law? It seems to me they got off quite lightly as it was. Instead you wish them far greater punishment and a long term mark against them that could affect their future employment? Do you really think t

The two Koreas weren't really equal, South Korea was well ahead in terms of building a viable economy for an advanced nation for the purposes of peace and prosperity. You are right in noting that the USSR was involved since it and China were engaged in providing massive aid to prop up North Korea. The North Koreas are responsible for their famine, not the US. They managed to magnify any hardship caused by the weather by means of incompetent and backwards communist inspired agriculture policy. What's wor